Today, among other things, we took a trip to a little town-within-a-town called 'Miyoshi' (for which the kanji actually looks like 'Mitsugi' – 'three-next') to buy stuff at their 'recycle shop' (essentially a thrift store, geddit?). We walked out with a SD V2 (Assault Buster) Gundam and Front Mission Gunhazard guide book for me, and assorted kimono stuff (but not the actual kimono) for Rachel. In addition, 4100 yen more got us a little table – the kind you sit on the floor for – and another 3 box bookshelf. Pretty good split, but the bookshelf only cost 100 – it's a bit emblematic of Japanese consumerism, as it's still very useful, but it's dinged up to hell and back. Dinner was a couple of Bento boxes, half off for being left at the end of the day – we ate heartily for 450 yen – bought from what the ALT living in the town called 'the elephant store' for its logo (the actual name is a bit more complicated, enough that I can't remember it). The apartment is starting to look like home.
I forgot to mention that we've been buying food since day 2, and it's almost uniformly more expensive than in the states. The fruit especially, to Rachel's consternation, comes to just about double what we've been getting it for. Except we lucked out yesterday evening, and a bunch of fruit was on sale – actually sitting in a sale pile. The thing about buying fruit here, is that they are put out based on appearance, regardless of taste. Hence, melons that go for 2980, peach-colored apples bigger than my fist going for 300 each, and fairly large grapes going for 2800 a bunch (of 20) or so. And then we come back the next day, and pick up an apple (same huge herkin' apple)/mango combo for 150. They were slightly imperfect, but were probably bumped out more due to their sell date. (That apple, by the way,
The only peanut butter we've found so far (and in all honesty we haven't looked hard) is a 200 ml container of Jiffy or something, at a place called 'YouMe' (pron. 'yume', like 'dream' – these names only get better). Instead, I bought something called 'peanut cream' (there's also 'peanut whip', with Snoopy on the container), which tastes almost exactly like the peanut butter in Reese's Pieces. It's actually not bad, but this is the first time I'll be using jam to counteract the peanut butter, when it's usually the other way around.
Rachel got her company car yesterday, and only really drove it today, to the recycle shop. It's an itty-bitty white Daihatsu, and while the pedals are on the same side (you push them with your right foot) the turn signal and windshield wiper levers are not. It has an AC at least, and a radio, but nothing else. The front seat foot space is actually pretty good; the back seats, not so much, but they fold down and gave us enough space for the table. Driving in Japan... Sigh. Maybe it's because I'm a Seattleite, but everyone here – including Rachel, once she got used to it – seems to drive like it's a street race. I'm given to understand that it's a Hiroshima thing, rather than a Japan thing, but it defeats the purpose of the one traffic camera we saw coming back from Miyoshi. We were going at least 20 kmh over the speed limit on parts of the return trip, on highway ('state-road') 54. Every car behind us kept up, and we never really caught up with anyone except at the occasional lights. And, of course, it really takes some time to get used to the fact that you hug the left wall when making a turn.
Still got more to say, just don't have the time to write it tonight.
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